Oral History Interview with Sadekaronhes Esquivel

Sadekaronhes Esquivel (any pronouns) is a Kanien’kehà:ka/Mexican Indigenous artist and writer whose maternal family resides on the Tyendinaga Mohawk Reserve in Ontario, CA and paternal family is from the greater Sacramento area and originates from Casa Grandes, Mexico. He comes from a family of artists, writers, beaders, painters, and regalia crafters. Sadekaronhes uses the mediums of illustration and games to craft worlds and stories to further imaginative futures and possibilities for greater Native representation in pop culture. Sadekaronhes currently resides in the Duwamish homelands of the Greater Seattle area and runs a small business, Rising Sons Media LLC, with their brother, Teiorhathe. 

Sadekaronhes is the artistic lead/lead concept artist on the Indigenous CyberNoir Detective video game, Hill Agency: PURITYdecay (2023), and concept artist for the video games Blacklight: Retribution 2012), Blacklight: Tango Down (2010), SAW (2009), and SAW II: Flesh & Blood (2010). He is a comics artist and writer with work in MOONSHOT: The Indigenous Comics Collection, Vol. 3 (2020), and the story “Quiet Nights” in A Howl: An Indigenous Anthology of Wolves, Werewolves, and Rougarou (2021). As an illustrator, he contributed to the Kickstarter hit Indigenous Science Fantasy tabletop role-playing game; Coyote & Crow (2021). As a writer, he created character bios for the Water Tribe Legends characters and helped develop a new canon Water Tribe character in the Avatar Legends tabletop role-playing game (2022).  

Sadekaronhes was previously a volunteer EMT/Firefighter for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, he worked with special education students in Eastern Washington and taught after school art classes, and he was involved in non-profit outreach with the Native community in the Greater Seattle area during the COVID-19 pandemic response.